Relations Between India and Pakistan

Often synonymous with open hostility, relations between India and Pakistan are influenced by numerous discordant factors. This essay will examine the primary antecedent, the Partition of India and its bifurcation into two states. In emphasising the collective trauma and fragile nationalisms that emerged, a connection will be established between the ensuing fear and distrust and its manifestation into policies and actions over the past six decades. Its ramifications will be considered in relation to each state’s security and regional ambitions, the Kashmir dispute and their acquiring of nuclear technology. Particular focus will be given to the Kargil conflict in determining if continued vexed relations could lead to nuclear war.

The Partition of India represented the culmination of ethnic tensions predominantly between the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. Examined within the prism of a security dilemma, Kaufmann (1998, 132) observes that independence from Britain removed the security guarantee from the minority communities. Faced with an uncertain future irresolvable in the existing model, it proved a gory culmination of more than fifty years of mutual suspicion and fear (I Ahmed 2002, 11). The horrors of forced resettlement signified the crucial relationship between the new borders of Pakistan and survival for Muslims (Gilmartin 1998, 1088). Moreover, partition created collective memories of refugeehood that continues to sustain hatred, whilst enabling the forgetting of atrocities committed by one’s own group (Chaturvedi 2002, 152). Thus, the enduring legacy of Partition is its homogenising effect – creating the “we” as the innocent victims of the “evil other”.

The fusing of a syncretic India into two states was above a...

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...d at assuaging spiralling can lead to an aggressor doubting a state’s willingness to resist. Given mistrust, misperception and deep convictions of malign intent plague relations, it produces a very uncomfortable balance of terror.

The calamitous events of Partition are critical to the contested narratives that continue to drive hostilities between India and Pakistan today. Arising from fear and distrust, the resulting nationalisms are adolescent, aggressive and arguably pernicious. This relentless animosity is embodied by internal instability, conflicting regional goals and the advent of nuclear weapons. While deterrence has proven to be an enduring bulwark, it relies on continued accurate perceptions and communications. Considering the intensity of competition and the tendency toward escalation, the risk of a nuclear conflict remains an acute possibility.